In the legislative race, the DPP also won impressively, winning 61 seats against the KMT’s 38, allowing the ruling party to continue to control the Legislative Yuan.

It was a dramatic turnaround from late 2018, when a jubilant KMT chairman Wu Den-yi led party officials in celebrating the KMT winning control of 15 of the island’s 22 cities and counties.

The unprecedented victory was credited in large part to the then highly popular Han, whose electoral influence buoyed other KMT candidates and helped the party take control of Kaohsiung, a long-time pro-independence stronghold in southern Taiwan.

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“There indeed are some voices calling for the former president [Ma] to return to the KMT as the chairman, taking over the post after Wu leaves,” a party source said on condition of anonymity on Monday.

“Their major consideration is that Ma has been chairman before and would be able to swiftly get the party back on track compared with other new comers because of his familiarity with party affairs.”

Ma was party chairman between 2005 and 2007 after he stepped down as Taipei mayor in 2004 and again between 2009 and 2014 while he was president. Ma was the island’s leader from 2008 to 2016 and succeeded as president by Tsai, who beat then New Taipei mayor Eric Chu Li-luan.

The source said that Ma’s ability to raise funds for the cash-strapped party, whose assets have been frozen by the governing authorities, would also make him a good choice for the post.

“The former president is also popular within the party and because of his seniority would be able to push through internal reforms without offending others,” the source said.

The source said young people were the key to success on the weekend.

“Therefore we need to have drastic reforms like replacing the party elders with young talent. When Ma was president he recruited quite a few of them, hoping to groom them as future leaders in Taiwan, but unfortunately, after he resigned as chairman in 2014, the party paid little attention to cultivating young talent,” the source said.

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Observers said the main reason for the KMT’s defeat was its failure to counter the DPP’s strategy of generating fear of a possible mainland takeover by saying that Taiwan could become the next Hong Kong if the KMT won.

But the lack of support from young Taiwan-born voters, who increasingly identified with the island instead of mainland China, was another major reason, they said.

The source said there were other voices from within the party opposing Ma to return as chairman.

“The former president is 70 years old and though he still keeps fit exercising every day, it would be difficult to convince others that the KMT really cares about generational change or wants to hand over its baton to the young generation,” the source said.

Ma’s office also said on Monday that “there is no plan for the former president to return as KMT chairman”.

Analysts said the calls for a Ma comeback highlighted the lack of fresh blood available to take over from the older generation and steer the party.

“People like [legislator and a great-grandson of late KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek] Chiang Wan-an and [legislator] Johnny Chiang are still too young to take the party’s reins. They might not be able to counter the conservative power of the party elders and local clans,” said Yen Chen-shen, senior researcher at National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations.

He said Chu, 58, could be a “compromise candidate” who could serve as an interim leader until the KMT could groom younger talent to take charge.

Chu, Han’s campaign manager, stepped down as KMT chairman in 2016 after his 3 million-vote loss to Tsai.

Kharis Templeman, adviser to the Hoover Institution’s Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific at Stanford University, said the KMT needed younger candidates who spoke the same language of those under 40 and new strategies to meet the expectations of those voters.

“The KMT clearly faces some daunting challenges,” he said, adding “very few people under 40 vote for them, and as we know under 40 years old today can be middle age tomorrow, and as you get older you turn out to vote more regularly and your partisan affiliation and identity become more solidified”.